


the things they carried

by ndnickerson



Category: Justified
Genre: Drinking, F/M, Flirting, Injury, Sexual Content, motel sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fridays aren't supposed to be like this, and background checks aren't supposed to end in shootouts behind Audrey's, dammit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the things they carried

Raylan was glad about the prisoner transfer for a while. Until he slid behind the wheel and the prisoner tried to wheedle him into stopping for a bag of those damn powder-sugar donuts and a cup of coffee, a _real_ cup of coffee, and Raylan started staring fixedly through the windshield and thought very hard about _not_ driving the point of his elbow into the prisoner's nose.

At least he was pretty much sober by ten a.m.

The thing was that Boyd was in lockup until his court appearance Monday, and Raylan didn't know why exactly but that put his teeth on edge more than knowing Boyd was out there stirring up shit and starting fights did. Maybe because he had to keep from wandering into that place in his head where he started thinking about running an errand over at the jail and maybe asking Boyd a few questions and maybe beating the ever loving shit out of him.

There were so many places in his head now that he really wasn't supposed to go anymore.

He was back at the office by two, a greasy hamburger roiling in his belly, and the weekend was stretching out in front of him like a slow dance when Art walked out of his office, a roll of antacids in his hand.

"Thought Tim was fillin out paperwork."

Raylan shrugged, working on his own. Fridays made him itchy. Every phone call, email, text was another hurdle between him and a cold beer and finding another way to forget where he was and how much he wanted to climb out of his fucking skin.

"Think you can do a little leg work and _not_ cause me twelve hours of paperwork and a coronary?" Art said, proffering a sheet of paper.

Raylan just quirked an eyebrow and took the paper.

Jimmie Earl Hunter had, with the help of two associates, knocked over an armored car three years earlier. A confidential informant had overheard a conversation between Hunter and some unknown subject indicating that the money Hunter needed to keep his place from going into foreclosure—the money from the robbery—was in a safe place, and he would speak to the person who had control over it and make sure everything was fixed.

Which meant someone on the outside had control over it.

Given the way things around Harlan usually worked, that individual would be a member of Jimmie's family or one of his close friends, and, if Art was passing the thing on with such a warning...

_Known Associates._

Raylan started scrolling.

And kept scrolling.

_Needle in a rotten haystack._

Sighing, he clicked back to the rap sheet, then to the incident report on the robbery. Hunter and two men, Willis Duncan and Grover—that had to be a fucking family name—"23" Edgerton—

That shook a few thoughts free from the detritus Raylan tried not to sift through too damn often. Twenty-three. He remembered hearing it shouted across the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly after the homecoming game. "Twenny-three!" Sounded like _twin-three_ when they said it enough times, and everyone called Edgerton that. Then he'd blown out his knee but damn if they didn't keep calling him by that damn jersey number that he hadn't worn for years.

Hunter, Duncan, and Edgerton. Edgerton had been the getaway driver and Raylan could imagine that readily enough, Edgerton cocking a finger and thumb at the pretty girls as they walked past, finding his adrenaline rush any way he could now. With that limp somebody would've spotted him in the bank.

Raylan had never been all that impressed by Edgerton, and he definitely wasn't now.

Willis Duncan didn't ring any bells, and his mug shot didn't either. He didn't have to pull up Hunter's, but he did anyway.

Hunter. Jimbo Hunter. He was a nasty piece of shit, and Raylan had run across his fair number of those in his life. He was a prime asshole from a family of assholes; Hunter was the kind of guy who would go along vandalizing a rival school and maybe set some shit on fire on the way out. His father had been a loudmouth jackass who had run afoul of the Bennetts a few times, if Raylan wasn't mistaken. Jimbo wasn't known for running his mouth, that was for damn sure. None of them were particularly high in intelligence, but in no way would Raylan want Hunter behind him in a fight.

Raylan snuck a glance at Art's office. Art was on the phone, waving a hand in exasperation or mute emphasis.

Raylan pulled up the known associates list again.

By the time Rachel came in, Raylan was digging in the first aid box near the coffee maker for some aspirin. "You know, we do have these things called _stores_ , where they sell things like painkillers. And better coffee," she added as an afterthought, glancing in the direction of Art's office.

Raylan gave her a wry smile. "You busy?"

The suggestion of a smile on Rachel's face faded almost instantly. "Depends," she said warily.

"Got a list a' known associates. Just wanted to see if anything pops for you."

Rachel gave him a look, and she didn't sit down at his desk when she came around to glance over the names. When Tim came in, she gestured him over, but Tim immediately took a big bite of his apple and shook his head vigorously.

"I got enough shit hangin over my head without any 'a his," Tim said, sliding into his desk chair.

"Drew Goddard."

Tim's gaze immediately shot from his computer screen to Rachel, then to Raylan. "They find him?"

"Goddard," Raylan said slowly. "Big dead-eyed sonofabitch?"

Rachel nodded. Raylan could tell Tim wanted to come over, but he was holding himself back. Tim shook his head. "Give me the time to set up and back him into a corner for me."

Goddard had got lucky where his first cousin Jimbo hadn't, and he'd been smart enough to keep his fingers out of most of the shit that had gotten Jimbo popped.

Raylan nodded at the screen. "Trust this guy with your bank heist haul?"

"No one would try to get it off him," Rachel admitted. "And he's been off and on APBs since last year."

Tim snorted. "And if I'd gotten there in time he'd be rottin away in a cell right now, like he should be."

"APBs out on him." Raylan liked it but he didn't like the idea of wasting his weekend combing through shit tracking down cold leads. Rachel made a few more suggestions, but Raylan kept circling back to Goddard, like a sore tooth.

Well, Goddard was a man.

Raylan didn't have yearbooks, and it took thirty minutes of the kind of thinking he didn't like doing to remember first names for the girls who had always been around Goddard. None of them popped, though. Moved away, married guys digging coal.

But he was a man and Raylan was thinking _Friday night, pool cue and long legs and cold beer_. And there were only so many places.

\--

Ava looked at the mug shot for a few seconds too long, arms folded, before she directed those baby blue eyes up at Raylan's face. "What's in it for me?"

"So you _have_ seen him." Raylan tucked the mug shot back into his pocket and tipped his hat back, smirking a little, but he'd never really been able to flip it off where Ava was concerned. She wore a yellow sundress and a denim jacket over it, sleeves rolled up, and he saw a scratch on the back of her hand. The beer he'd knocked back before the bartender had dug Ava up was telling him to take those slender soft hands of hers, and the star on his belt was wondering how many triggers she'd pulled since he'd seen her last, how much gunshot residue lingered in the whorls and loops of her fingertips.

In another life, he'd be Arlo's son, panting at her heels, fucking her in firefly kissed moonlight behind one of those damn trailers. In another life he'd be out pulling collection duty while Boyd schemed behind prison bars, no pale finger of scar tissue in his chest.

"Didn't _say_ that." Her grin wasn't quite as wide as it had been, but her voice was still like amber honey and in his present state of mind, his excuse for leaving her was made dim with regret. She could play the damsel in distress one minute and the tough as nails madam the next, and he felt like he'd always known who she _was_. She'd cast her lot with Boyd, though, and while that was her choice, he couldn't help thinking—

"Sounds like we ain't got nothin to barter with," Raylan said, and took another sip of his beer. "Maybe I can do you a little favor, though. Hang out at your front door and check IDs. Break up any bullshit. Friday night, payday at the mine? Sure you got a lot 'a business comin through."

"Bouncer at a whorehouse," Ava said slowly, tilting forward, and God, he didn't know how many times he'd buried his face between those breasts, only that he hadn't done it enough. "Marshal service must not pay for shit."

"I got a weakness for pretty long-legged blondes," he shrugged. "You seen him. And if you seen him, other people have. It's Friday night and I been dyin for a beer and some company, and here we are."

"And I suppose you want a little somethin on the house," she said, tilting her head. "Off the menu. Since after all you chasin a fugitive, not lookin to take in some girls makin an honest livin, soothin a man's natural loneliness."

"You been takin lessons at Boyd's knee," Raylan accused her, and a small quirk of her eyebrow sent his thoughts going down an entirely different trail.

Raylan was glad when the bartender came over and muttered some question, and he cooled himself off with a long sip of beer. He was off the clock and this was by far his favorite game of chicken to play.

Ava sank her teeth into her lower lip before she glanced up at him again. "The girl you want is busy right now," she said, crossing her arms again.

"With him?"

Ava chuckled. "No. And I hafta say that I don't know for sure that it _is_ her. Just that if anyone knows, she would."

Raylan finished off his beer. "So we got some time to kill. What, another ten minutes til the magic fingers give out?"

Her eyes were blue as a summer sky, and just as dangerous.

\--

And then there were about forty-five good minutes that Raylan wished Boyd was beside him. Although that would have given Art that particularly apoplectic expression, and Raylan didn't relish the idea of breaking in a new boss just yet. Or all the fucking paperwork involved in firing his weapon this many goddamn times.

Tim wouldn't have been half bad backup either.

It was just a fucking hunch. Just a motherfucking hunch.

\--

Sharee knew where Goddard was, although it took her a good ten minutes of intense questioning and Ava's fist clenching a few times to get her to admit it. Raylan was on his second—probably—beer of the night and said to call him, tell him there was a happy hour special or some shit, and Ava gave him the most withering glance he could remember since—

Well, then he finished that damn beer and moved on to the next. Sharee's kitchen counters were crowded with red Solo cups and the ends of cigarettes and other things he didn't want to look at too damn closely.

And the thing was that Goddard didn't fucking _respond_ or Raylan would've called for Tim or someone or Christ, maybe not had that fourth beer.

And when Goddard and one of his boys got away, leaving the third on his back scrabbling crabwise through the tall grass, Ava called _you limpdick fuckin coward_ after him _,_ her rifle smoking and her sandal filling with blood.

Yeah, Boyd was going to love this.

Raylan was pretty sure he couldn't give less of a fuck.

\--

The one thought—

_get her to a hospital get to a fuckin hospital_

—didn't matter because Ava was driving although Raylan was damn sure that he was seventy percent sober now. The sound of gunshots tended to do that.

The second was _lindsay no don't go home with her._

It wasn't that this thing between him and Lindsay was in any way defined or simple, but Raylan didn't like the thought of Ava and Lindsay facing off. Unless it involved mud wrestling.

"Pull off here," Raylan said, pointing, and Ava hissed out a curse as she turned the wheel.

They hadn't stayed once Goddard had pulled out, tires smoking. Ava had muttered something about unlicensed firearms and Raylan didn't need another fucking night sitting at the local precinct filling out reams of paperwork, not right now, not tonight. Besides, he was escorting a witness to emergency care. She was driving and she flat out refused to go to a hospital and Raylan needed to take down her statement, or...

Those words in some order. Maybe.

And of course it was the same damn motel where he lived when he came back, and he walked in and asked for a room and saw Ava's blood drying on his fingers.

_This is the life we've chosen._

There should be an end, there _had_ to be an end to all this, this bullshit, this stupid endless cycle.

But Raylan wasn't sure he'd have a place in a world without it.

\--

He couldn't have done it back at that house she shared with Boyd, because while Raylan might have been an asshole, he and Boyd had a history, and maybe he'd woken up more than a few times with the taste of her still on his lips, but he wasn't that guy. He knew he wasn't that guy.

He still knew where the ice machine was, though, so he filled up the bucket and he was just drunk enough to think it was a good idea to rip part of his shirt off for a bandage. As though that would impress a woman like her. As though he needed to impress anyone, particularly Ava Crowder, who had shot her husband while he was in the middle of his favorite meal.

Goddard wouldn't fall for this shit again, either. He had to find someone else to get to Goddard through, and it hit him, a furrowed brow in an unmarked grave, a body his father claimed, and bile rose in Raylan's throat. The longer he was here, more of them fell, more and more, and he had to fucking stop drinking because he saw an army of Quarles, all soulless blue eyes and deprecating laugh, come down here to take what wasn't theirs.

Save for the fact that his body already knew its resting place, beside his mother and beside that damn empty house, Raylan couldn't help thinking that his original impulse had been right. Harlan wasn't his anymore, and while its pulse beat in his veins, while he could navigate the back roads and speak the language like something from a dream, sometimes it felt like all he had done since he had come back was hurt people.

Ava slipped out of her other shoe, wincing. She had rinsed the blood off the first, left it to dry in the bathroom sink. The right cuff of her denim jacket was stained a black-red.

"Ava, we gotta go to the hospital. At least get you somethin for the pain, get you checked out."

She drew a glass of water from the tap and rooted around in her purse. "I had a goddamn bullet hole in my chest. You think I don't carry shit for pain?"

They carry pain, all of them. Soldiers in a fucking meaningless war. Bullet holes and blood.

Ava took two pills and offered him the rest of the glass and he tossed it back, and he needed more or none at all. None at all would be good.

_Deputy Givens transported the witness to a motel room where he proceeded to increase his level of intoxication beyond responsible or legal limits._

_Deputy Givens transported the witness to a motel room where undisclosed activities took place, resulting in the destruction of personal property (clothing)._

_Deputy Givens was reprimanded by an Assistant United States Attorney for engaging in the kind of behavior that he couldn't quite get off his mind that night._

Ava shrugged out of her jacket, muttering, "I really should get back."

"Yeah, and get that graze wound infected as shit."

"Because rollin around on that bedspread ain't gonna do the same thing."

And that sobered him up more than the gunshots had.

\--

Here's the thing. He saw her get shot under an hour before—graze, whatever the fuck—and things started off gentle as far as he could remember and then her nails were dragging over his shoulder blades as he circled her belly button with his tongue. Her panties were light pink, washed soft; he would have thought the madam of Audrey's would wear something a little more adventurous, but then she wasn't exactly planning for a conjugal visit at the prison tonight, probably.

She hadn't bailed Boyd out.

There could be no better indication that Boyd had every intention to remain inside, that whatever he was planning wasn't over.

It had been long enough that when Raylan worked his way up, pushing the damn sundress up above her breasts, the brush of his lips over the scar of her bullet wound didn't make her flinch back in pain. And she found his with her lips too, the hole in his side. Both thanks to the fucking Bennetts.

And then she found other parts of him, and God he had missed that wicked tongue of hers. She teased him and he felt the laughter in her throat as she swirled her tongue around him.

Tomorrow this would not have happened. Tomorrow they wouldn't talk about it and it would become another pocket of his life that he has to ignore, but that was okay, because his entire damn life felt like that now. Things that can't have happened, things that can never happen again, mistakes that he can never take back.

But there was still this, the way she clenched and ground against him when he tasted her, the way she wound herself around him, her heels pressing into his lower back, her breath against his chest.

She accepted him. She fucking accepted him. And that was more than he could say about almost anyone else in his life, and in the morning they would walk away from this.

_We could get away from all this._

But she had had her taste, and it was like the day he found a gun was like an extension of his own hand, a more brutal harbinger of his will. She wouldn't walk away from this and it had taken him years to figure it out but, as much as he tried to pretend otherwise, his desire wasn't enough to do a damn thing other than fuck everything up.

Maybe he didn't carry a fucking bottle of painkillers around with him, but at least he remembered the condom.

And it didn't matter, here; Lindsay wasn't downstairs and he wasn't a long-term resident and when Ava bucked against him, sobbing out her pleasure, he didn't shush her, did nothing more than gaze up at her, the fine wisps of her hair swaying as she fucked him.

If he'd never left—

He'd have been dead a long time ago, if he'd never left.

_We can pretend we're other people, but only for so long._

Ava pushed her hair out of her face as she rolled off him, her eyes shining, and he didn't mind the sight of her, not at all.

She sighed. "I swore I'd slap your face if you tried this shit again," she said, shaking her head.

Raylan made an affronted noise. "Someone invisible holdin an invisible gun to your head?"

She turned away, reached for her underwear and shimmied back into them. "Nonsmokin room, huh."

"All about the rules, aren't ya," he mumbled, reaching for his own underwear.

_Run away with me._

But this terrible pulse, the anger in his blood, would be wherever he went.

And she would understand.

She sat up, facing away from him, and his hand rested just above her skin before he gently pressed his palm against the small of her back.

Not everything was the worse for his presence. He had to believe that.

"Rest up, cowboy," she said, reaching for her sundress and her purse, the cigarettes and lighter. "We got until sunrise."

He needed another fifth, for that. Another box of condoms, some gauze to wrap tight around her injured leg, and a hell of a lot more ice.

And maybe another sunrise.


End file.
